255

GREAT HARM IS INFLIGTED
--------------
Christian Science as Practiced
Results in Very Serious
Things.
---------------
Mrs. Peattie Writes of a Belief and Practice
Which is Obsrading it-self Upon Notice.
-----------------
She Says Despite its Evil Results There is
a Germ of Immoral Truth in the
" Science."
-------------------
There has come into the religious life of Christendom, during the last few years, the peculiar demonstration known as Christian science. It is a philosophy which claim a unity for mind and matter, and for mind and spirt, and for spirit and God Sickness of the body is the indication of the sin of the spirt.
By cleansing one the other is cured. Heat, cold--all external affections--matter not to him whose spirit is fixed in its [dr?] unrecognizance of matter---who looks always of God.
Metaphysics are quite difficult enough to make comperhensible even when they deal with the simple and understood phenomena of the mind ; but when they deal with that. Whcih for convenience, may be termed supernatural, it is dfficult indeed, to understand them. The involutions and complexities of the Christain science metaphysics may well dismay even the most studious mind
But briefly, as the simple understand the laws of this teaching, spirit and matter are one--aprit is God---all is God. The Christian scientists refuss to recognize matter.
As the philosphy reads, It is pleasant, serene and pure. Whatever its points of differenatiation may be from the orthordox Christain teaching, it seems to be in general harmony, and to be rather an attempt to make practical the most absturse teaching of Christ. It also attempts to modernize the miracles. It believes in the casting out of devis, figuratively speaking and the making whole of the dissased body.
That is the theory. As to the practice----but what religion would like to be ludged by the practice of those who profess it? Making, then, all allowance for human weakness. and for the inability of common mortals to attain to their own ideals, the fact remains that by the insitence of believers in this Christ healing, upon those who do not believe, great harm is inflicted.
A few weeks ago a little girl in this city was stricken with diphtbera. Her mother was a Christain scientist and would call no physician. The poor little one grew worse. She begged to be allowed to remain in bed. She wanted care. She wept and said she was not able to play. The mother, infaturated with these amazing metaphysics, would listen to no reason. She told the child not to metion her illness, and assured her that pain was a delusion.
She drive the little one out of the house to play in the yard It was not that she was hard-hearted or that she did not love her little girl
It was merely that she compelted her-self to have the faith which would more mountains. But no mountain, so far as known, has ever been moved by faith.
And the little girl, who might have been saved if the mother had called medical assiatance, died, because that mother insited on persevering to the end in her belief. The poor child is dead. No faith of the mother's can restore her to life. And one wonders if she " refused to recognize" that pathetic bit of matter, the little cold body that had held the spirit of her child. No one knows where that spirit has gone. No one can be sure that there ever was a sprit.
We may believe it---most of us affirm it. But it is certain, The only thing about the child that as certain was the body, with its delicate functions--its movement, thought and beauty.
As one thinks of that helpless little thing, bound body and soul to obedience to its parent, in the pathctic way that childern are, depending on that parent's judgment for its very life, being denied what common humanity would have accorded to it, one is almost impelled to pronounce the whole belief as fraudulent, frantic and insane.
Yet, within all the folly and frenzy of this belief